The chances of an upset in Brighton’s FA Cup third-round tie against Newcastle
improved with Demba Ba’s £7 million move to Chelsea.

But Gus Poyet, the manager of the Championship side, would trade a place in the game’s oldest knock-out competition for a proven Premier League goalscorer of his own as the south coast club chase promotion in their new £9 million stadium.

“I’m very glad Ba is not playing. And if he wants to leave [Papiss] Cisse out I will be very happy,” Poyet joked before tomorrow’s televised lunch-time kick-off, a rematch of last season’s fourth-round victory for the Seagulls. “Maybe the fans want to see the best players at the Amex [Stadium]. He is an outstanding player, he can score from anywhere. It’s better he is not there. It doesn’t mean it will be easy but I’m pleased he is not.”

After a storming start to their Championship campaign Brighton have dropped to ninth but are only three points off a play-off place and Poyet is pressing his chairman, Tony Bloom, to invest in a top-grade striker. “We are a better team this season, but not in points,” Poyet says. “Most of the time, the teams that make a difference in the budget and buy the best players have the best chance.

“Reading [last season’s champions] were one team before Jason Roberts and a totally different team after Roberts. He was one of the best players in the division. He made an impact. If you can bring in that kind of player and pay him that quantity of money and the player is good enough to make that impact then you have a great chance. For us at the moment it is not possible. But I am trying to convince the chairman.”

Brighton-Newcastle games always revive memories in Sussex of the Albion’s march to Wembley in 1983, where they lost to Manchester United, after winning at St James’ Park in the third-round. Last year Brighton beat Alan Pardew’s side 1-0 at the Amex but were then thumped 6-1 at Liverpool.

“The players they gave everything they could in the beginning and then every decision was more difficult because of the tension, the tiredeness, the power of the opposition, which they couldn’t cope with,” Poyet says of that day at Anfield. “I didn’t talk for two days. At home everybody knew that when I was coming back from Liverpool that they were not allowed to talk to me for two days. They know me now. I wanted to make a hole in the ground and go in and hide forever.”

So now the push is on to find a Demba Ba for Brighton. Would that make the vital difference? “Oh, no doubt. In the five or six games we didn’t win here at the Amex, if one of those players was here, I’m sure we get four wins from six, and then we’re probably third or fourth. And I tell you that’s a big difference, because with another eight or nine points we’d be big contenders for the top two places. They make a difference, the boys at the front. You know what they say: in England you’re only as good as your two strikers.”